Flynn read it three times.

I watched him read it three times.

And then every drop of color left his face, and he sat down, heavily, in his great leather chair, and put his face in his hands — because that number did not only tell him who my son was.

It told him that everything he had believed for five years was a lie, and that he had built his entire life on top of it, and that the woman he had spent those five years hating had given birth to his child in a prison cell.

Mason was his son.

The little boy he had found shivering in the slush, apologizing for dirtying his floor, was his own flesh and blood.